Mining Malware is on the Rise, IoT and Mac OS Under Fire

McAfee has released a regular report on hackers’ crypto-attacks. Cases with the detection of crypto mining malware are growing at an incredible pace. Even Mac OS and IoT users can’t be safe.

According to McAfee, the total number of coin miner malware has increased by more than 4,000% over the past year. Mac OS users, who are traditionally considered to be protected devices, also in danger. McAfee detected the OSX.Dummy virus script, which the attackers distributed in various crypto mining chat groups. The criminals spread it in Telegram, Discord and Slack messengers, promising that the script will help with fixing the user's mining problem. But after installing it, hackers got access to the device.

McAfee also found that hacker spread miner viruses through the repository media player with an open-source code Kodi.

Moreover, IoT devices like IP cameras or video recorders are at risk. Previously, hackers did not pay attention to these devices, because their capacity is not enough for the crypto mining. But now the attackers have learned to connect to hundreds of devices at the same time, which allows the malicious mining activity.